Mural 7: Passing Through Customs

Installed 1982

A mural showing people at a terminal, with a portrait and biography of Enrico Sansone, who died of lung cancer after contact with asbestos, featured in the foreground.

Depicts the arrival and community of immigrants in the Woolloomooloo area.

2026 Biennale of Sydney

Merilyn Fairskye & Michiel Dolk, the artists behind the Woolloomooloo Mural Project, were commissioned by the 2026 Biennale of Sydney to produce a new video mural titled Person to Person.

This video mural is a contemporary portrait of Woolloomooloo that references its history of real estate, housing and homelessness. It serves as a dialogue between the existing murals under the eastern suburbs railway viaduct, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and 2 bus shelters the City of Sydney owns on Bourke Street next to Tom Uren Place.

QMS supports this initiative by displaying portraits of local community members.

Artist: Merilyn Fairskye, Michiel Dolk

Diverse communities of sailors, fishers and immigrant workers settled in Woolloomooloo throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Passing Through Customs portrays moments of arrival, labour and daily life for the immigrants of the suburb.

Mural diagram

Line drawing of the mural's layout, with numbered green circles marking 7 different people, structures, and objects throughout the busy environment.

Mural key

Immigrants arriving at Woolloomooloo passenger terminal
Passengers disembarking
Portrait of Enrico Sansone, factory worker, who frequently visited Garibaldi’s Working Man’s Club, Darlinghurst. Died prematurely from lung cancer following prolonged exposure to asbestos used in the manufacture of brake linings
Portrait of unidentified factory worker and resident of Woolloomooloo
Fishing boats moored at Browns Wharf
Mending nets on the wharf
Three generations of an Italian immigrant family together

The Woolloomooloo waterfront was home to diverse communities of sailors and immigrant workers from non-Anglo-Irish backgrounds. By the turn of the 20th century this area included a growing fishing community, mostly of Maltese and Italian origin. Many single men from Italy and Malta also worked as stevedores, painters and dockers and lived in boarding houses close to the waterfront.

A community of Italian immigrants settled in Darlinghurst after Giuliano Rizzo established Sydney’s first pasta factory in 1903 at 73 Stanley Street. In 1916 Rizzo supplied free pasta to a shipload of Maltese refugees stranded in the harbour at Woolloomooloo after the government refused their landing. Later, with chain migration, many brought their families and moved on to other areas.

A fish market was set up at Forbes Street, Woolloomooloo in 1872. It was upgraded in 1893, before moving in 1914 to the Sydney Municipal Markets at Haymarket.

After Sydney was hit by bubonic plague in 1901 – the source of which was the rat-infested waterfront – the wharves came under the control of the new Sydney Harbour Trust (later the Maritime Services Board) which began a massive rebuilding program. From 1910 to 1914 the old semi-circular wharf was demolished and the Finger Wharf, able to take deep sea vessels and ocean liners, was built to a design by engineer Henry Walsh. Walsh Bay is named after him.

The wharves at Woolloomooloo Bay played a significant role in Sydney’s history, not only for import and exports but as embarkation points for troops leaving for the Boer War and World Wars 1 and 2. They were also arrival points for returned servicemen and migrants after World War 2.

In 1956, Shed No. 7 of the Finger Wharf was altered and upgraded as the Woolloomooloo Passenger Terminal.

Sicilians, Calabrians and people from the Aeolian islands made up a significant part of the fishing community in Woolloomooloo. Fishing boats were tied in deep water moorings at Browns Wharf, next to the Finger Wharf. Relatively small, the boats worked inside and just outside the Sydney Heads. When not drying nets in the sun, in bad weather fishermen were seen mending their nets or playing cards at the wharf.

Before moving to Pyrmont and Leichhardt, the annual Blessing of the Fleet was celebrated in Woolloomooloo as the Feast of St Rocco. Traditionally, celebrations involved a Mass followed by a procession through the streets to Browns Wharf where a sermon in English and Italian would be given, and the fishing fleet would be blessed with incense and holy water.

The boats would then be crowded with passengers and sailed around the bay decorated with streamers and balloons. When crucial areas of the suburb were demolished for the construction of the eastern suburbs railway and the eastern distributor roadway, the fishing industry began to move away from Woolloomooloo.

In Woolloomooloo in the 1980s there were still some elderly Italian men who had worked the trawlers in the heyday of the bay’s fishing industry. They were living in boarding houses and patronising the Atlanta and Garibaldi clubs.

A collage-style mural depicts immigrants arriving at Woolloomooloo passenger terminal, personal portraits, a memorial photo, and scenes of daily life such as washing clothes and fishing. — Photo: Chris Southwood / City of Sydney

Next: Mural 8: Women in Woolloomooloo →

View all Woolloomooloo history murals

Designed and painted by local artists Michiel Dolk and Merilyn Fairskye, these 8 murals on the railway pylons in Woolloomooloo preserve and celebrate the suburb’s unique history.